It's not amusing; it's not weird. They stated their point over and over. They are desperate and looking for ways to stop the spread of this virus.

You'd be surprised at how deeply the insular mentaility ("It won't happen to me") goes on this score.

The amount of education is not at issue, but the quality. Cerise hit it on the head when she pointed out sensationalism as a culprit. By way of analogy, the drug war in this country has been singularly counterproductive - leaving aside for a moment that prohibition doesn't work and looking just at the "drug education" ad campaigns, it is quite clear to anyone who has been around the block a time or two that the ad campaigns are sensationalistic trash. A frying egg representing "your brain on drugs" may be cute, but it is not an accurate representation of what drugs do - positive or negative. And this bullshit smells to high heaven, and everyone knows it, and the statistics from ONDCP (the very people putting the ads out) bear out that the ads cause more harm than good, because they damage the credibility of the anti-drug message and make those who are most likely to want to use drugs less likely to listen to rational warnings about the dangers involved, and thus less likely to either use responsibly or not use at all. For example, how many people who DIDN'T grow up in the 60s (around the stuff) know why having a good chemist working in a good laboratory is important to verify before dropping acid? Indeed, how many people know that pure LSD is benign (i.e. producing fewer negative side-effects than asprin) in people with normal body chemistry, acts as an anti-depressant rather than as a hallucinogen in people with low levels of certain neurotransmitters, and does not actually get metabolized by the body? How many people know that "acid flashbacks" are just as much of an urban myth as is "marijuana psychosis"? People coming out of drug education programs are unable to make any kind of informed decision about drugs - if they are not scared into compliance they are, in fact, less well prepared than they would have otherwise been, because they are now predisposed to NOT believe the true things they learned in drug education class, since they could smell so much bullshit attatched to it.

I think you are gravely mistaken, my friend

Absolutely! This culture is obsessed with trinkets and amusements particularly because of its discomfort with pleasure. Do you honestly believe that a person who saw the pleasure of food as a good thing would constantly gorge themselves at McDonalds - or even at a good resteraunt? Of course not! Someone who loves the pleasure of food cultivates it, savors it, enjoys it. They do not wolf down a bowl of caviar as if they were french fries.

Similarly, someone who is comfortable with sex and sees it as very good and savors it will cultivate their skill as a lover, focusing on improving their ability to give and receive pleasure and to be focused and in the moment in a variety of circumstances. They will be thoughtful at choosing partners, they may have one or many, but they will be selective about it, because it is important to have GOOD sex, not just to fuck.

In the U.S. the pleasures of life are not looked well upon. Where in Germany or England you have the villiage cultural centers in Pubs that serve good beer and good food (well, by British standards, anyway ;)), in America you have to look long and hard for a bar approaching the kind of atmosphere that invites community, has darts and pool that don't cost money, that encourages social intercourse, and that is concerned with the quality of the memories people will bring away from the place.

Conversation, contemplative smoking (of the herb of your choice), social intercourse, enjoyment of nature, good drink (alcoholic or caffinated), discriminating sexuality, intellectual development, and aesthetics of all sorts are all pleasures that are valuable and delightful and important parts of life.

But Amerians (and this is particularly BECAUSE of conservative Protestant influence in the last 100 years) can't put up with that, and replace the pleasures with harsh dualities comprised of equally unhealthy choices. Conversation is replaced by trivia or avoided entirely; smoking is either abstained from or allowed to continue only as an addiction; social intercourse is replaced by ministering, "networking," and gossip; the whole notion of discriminating sexuality is destroyed in favor of an artifical choice between "True Love Waits" and unbridled licentiousness, both undergirded and encouraged by profligate use of pornography and general sexual anesthesia; intellectual development is disdained from all quarters unless it can be justified in terms of activism towards one end or another; and aesthetics - film, theater, music, poetry, literature, visual arts - is roundly replaced by amusements of a P.T. Barnum or lower level (such as MTV, advertising jingles, sitcoms, Fox News, and Calvin Klein).

Um...they are. Or did you not hear the uproar about the abstinence-only programs that the Feds are mandating now because of Bush's policies to appease the fundamentailsts - and the fact that the textbooks for the cirriculums in the two largest programs are full of lies, half-truths, invented statistics, misinformation, disinformation, and (on top of that) completely avoid several important topics (such as masturbation and a comprehensive survey of birth control and STD epedemiology) that are not only germaine but absolutely essential to the topic?

Well, first off, they ARE being blocked. When was the last time you saw a film that dealt with sexuality in an adult manner without being pilloried to such an extent that it vanished with a whisper? 10 points if you said "1999 - American Beauty." In the time since, more and more films have been shitcanned by the studios in fear of persecution by the religious right, and others have been denied wide release, marketing funds, or other considerations because they were too adult. Not too sexual - too adult. The sex you see everywhere is exactly the kind of sex that conforms to the prejudices of conservative religious folk - cheap, usually degrading, stupid, over-glamorized, commercially driven, and mindless. Thoughtful films about sex are a big no-no in the U.S., which is why the vast majority of such films are financed and distributed in Canada or Europe, despite the censorship laws in many European countries and Canada.

Sex on the ratio and TV are similarly circumscribed - and are under an amazing level of attack when they don't toe the party line. The FCC is leveling record fines for things that, 10 years ago, wouldn't have gotten so much as a blink.

America is in the midst of the most brutal and censorious crackdown since the 1950s - thank you very much Donald Wildmon and James Dobson. And it's going to get worse. There was a time when I thought as you did, Gerbil - there's sex everywhere, people are glutted out on it, and they need to return to a purer view of sex and respect it by not trotting it out in public. However, I have since gotten into the business, and the realities of the business are almost diametrically opposite. It is a fight to get sex into the mainstream in any form other than the comedic or the pornographic, and it is difficult precisely BECAUSE American Protestants have declared that sex is too sacred to venture outside the marriage bed, and they are actively fighting to expunge all thoughtful discourse on the subject. The comedic is tolerated because it is necessary - people always laugh at what they are uncomfortable with. And the pornographic persists because the churchgoers need it as a boogeyman (and because the porn business is kept alive by pastors - a mild exaggeration, but not a joke).

On that, we can at least agree. Hopefully, as your children age and start seeing such material, they will reognize the bullshit for what it is and be able to communicate openly with you about that - as well as about real live things.

Good for you. I hope (sincerely) that your attitudes communicated through your body language are as enlightened and relaxed as your conscious approach is. If that is the case, your daughters are lucky women indeed.

That's not why "standards" bit the dust. This demonstrates a terribly naive reading of recent history. I take it that you have not studied in depth and are too young to remember the sexual revolution and it's shakeout?

I agree, it's disgusting. However, I don't really honestly give a shit about making it safe for children. That's deeply misguided. Putting pressure on it to be honest to adults is perfectly adequate. Good quality adult programming - regardless of content - is nearly always more healthy for children than is "family friendly," "youth" or "children's" programming, which is little more than gussied up advertising or preaching in any event. You'd do far better showing your children "I, Claudius" - which contains nudity, some violence, and a lot of really twisted shit but deals with it in a very adult and mature manner, than you are letting them watch MTV.

Because it isn't the portrayal of risky behaviors that is the problem, it is the prohibition on dialogue about sex and related issues that is the problem. Our culture - particularly the conservative element, but also the radical leftist element - does not tolerate honest dialogue about sex becasuse honesty on that subject is a detriment to their social adgendas, moral codes, and convictions about reality and human nature. However, we are perfectly content to exploit sex for profit and social control (and, by the by, Dobson and his ilk do this every bit as much as do the advertising people working in the perfume inustry). We are content to laugh at it, to degrade it, to exploit people for it. We WILL NOT, however, tolerate enlightened discussion of the topic, or tasteful aesthetic discourse, or >>gasp<< honest portrayal of sexual issues and situations. In the Protestant-dominated culture, sex is used to titilate and exploit, but is not allowed to move beyond those roles.

Wrong wrong wrong.

There are laws in many localities against advertising NC-17 rated or unrated films, and in most of the rest of the country most venues will not carry such ads because of pressure form religious groups such as Focus on the Family and the American Family Association (formerly the Federation of Decency). Similarly, because of threatened boycots from such groups, most members of the theater owners trade association will not carry such films in their theaters regardless of their merit or commecial possibilities, because carrying them in the theater means dealing with boycotts of other movies by groups that wouldn't go and see the adult-oriented film in the first place.

Furthermore, NC-17 rated films are not by definition pornographic - indeed, I have seen PG-13 rated films that are far more pornographic than some NC-17 films I've seen. Some, of course, are pornographic, just as are films with lower ratings that deal mostly in sensationalism, mealy-mouthed romanticism and glamorization. For example, Eyes Wide Shut was a recent film (should have been NC-17, was cut to an R to the noticible detriment of the film) that was thoroughly adult, contained a goodly amount of nudity, and was absolutely non-pornographic - indeed, it was anti-pornographic and had a moral thrust that most conservative Christians would be comfortable with if they could bring themselves to sit down and engage the material (which was, after all, extremely thoughtful).

No, they are kept out of the market because they are politically risky. They don't make good money because they are not afforded wide distribution. Granted,their target audience is such that they will never be blockbusters, but E Tu Mama Tambien made more per screen in art house release than did the majority of "family" films released to general audiences that year.

Religious people making noise about a forgettable film is desired by directors, but religious persecution is something that scares the hell out of the distributors and financiers, and for good reason. They have been shut down by the government before, and have had their constitutional rights puled from them on various occasions, and such is being threatened again by the FCC (an unelected body). For Pete's sake, Gerbil, PBS is censoring Holocaust documentaries out of fear of losing their funding, and you're trying to argue that there isn't religious persecution of filmmakers in this country?

If pornography and nudity are equated in your mind then I sincerely hope that your wife gets undressed behind a screen. Not every thoughtful film about sex has a plethora of nudity in it, but there are some aspects of sex that you can't explore thoughtfully without it. And, even if you could, what is the problem with using nudity in a thoughtful context? You reveal yourself with your derisive reference to "naked booty." Just because you do not respect the human body in its nude form does not negate it's multi-millenial history as a revered object in art of all sorts.

And it's not about bad filmmaking either - that's a red herring through and through. You are attempting to build a straw man artisan in the image of pornographers, and it doesn't wash for a minute.

Cerise is right - you stick words into people's mouths to make your life more convinient. I NEVER said that an intelligent sex film has to be pornographic - I have been arguing manifestly the opposite EVERY STEP OF THE WAY.

Furthermore, fundamentalists are deomonstrably chasing intelligent sexually-oriented material out of the cultural landscape, and not just in film. They are attempting to get Tenesee Williams and Virginia Woolf's books removed from libraries - and the group attempting to do this has been having audiences with the President who is sympathetic to their cause.

That just cracked me up!

Actually, the transverse is true. I got into the business, in part, because I saw a very real vaccuum that I thought I could fill with a modicum of thoughtful discourse - both on the issues of nudity and related aesthetics, and on many other equally-if-not-more important issues. But this is also why I am up-front about where my values lie, because my being in this field means that I have a perspective that is at times radically different and at variance with those around me.

Attending to arousal at the time and place of one's own chosing is a matter of individual soverignty that is too often transgressed without adequate warning or consent...no argument from me there. The scene I cited was specific, and in a particular context, and cited for reasons of that context. Part of that context is a film that was quite up front about its content and its unusual perspective - it was not slipped casually into an otherwise "family" film for the purposes of titilation, it was in the midst of a film ABOUT something - in partiular, about sex, beauty, identity, trust, and hypocrisy. And it was a very adult film, marketed to adults and not to teenagers or children or families.

That is EXACTLY what I meant by titilation - and good for you for not buying!

This may come as a bit of a shock to you, but I'm also sick of it. But I'm not sick simply of the nudity, I'm sick of the cynical manipulation of nudity, the exploitation of beauty for selling cars and perfumes, the narrowing of the definition of beauty to a single group of body types on a single gender. I'm sick to the teeth of the whole thing, because the whole thing is sick and more than just a little degrading.

But to my way of thinking, there are two ways to deal with the situation that are productive:

One is not to buy what they're selling, to refuse to be manipulated by sex or nudity or beauty. This is VERY important, it is what you are doing and (if I don't mistake my understanding) also what Gerbil is doing and advocating.

The other is to create beauty that has its own purpose - to engage, to enjoy, to provoke thought, to communicate ideas. This is something I attempt to do in my landscape photography as well as my poetry, stories, and figure art. Granted, it's my opinion and it's slanted, but I believe this is equally important.

No, I do not forget it - the fact of the matter is blindingly obvious. More to the point, I am running into an increasing number of people who see Boticelli and Donatello as pornographic as well. I well recognize that because of what I do my tolerance for certain things in artistic contexts - violence as well as nudity - is well above what should be reasonably expected of people in general. That's not what I'm arguing at all. As Tom Lehrer said: "Filth is in the mind of the beholder." People should not be subjecting themselves to things which bother them so, unless they see that scruple as a reaction that they should work on desensitizing. And even then, it should be done thoughtfully and deliberately.

But, by the same token, the objections of the few (or even of the many) should be part of the engaged cultural and aesthetic dialogue, not an attempt to un-expose others to the things which some find objectionable.

My issue is not with Mad Gerbil's attitude regarding certain things as private, nor with his irritation and offense at having his sexuality exploited. My issue is with his globalizing and imprecise language defining most things (in this case, sexual things) he finds objetionable under the same heading without vetting out the differences between the issues involved. He objects to pornography - good for him! He wants to call anything he doesn't like or that bothers him "pornographic" - well, then he's going to need to provide some justification for that. That sort of solipsistic reasoning is of the same character of the reasoning which sees the very real harm in alcoholism and so objects to alcohol in general. Even though he may well not intend to come across in that way - and it is my sense that he doesn't - the net result of the way he argues is that he does precisely this.

I am quite aware that this particular issues is one in which there are a variety of extremely valid and defensible positions, and that the positions of a given person can vary greatly depending upon whether one is debating politics and law, or ethics, or personal taste, or aesthetics. You and I hold opinons and tastes on this issue (which we have discussed before, at length, and enjoyably) that are in some areas sharply at varience and in other areas in comfortable accord, and my understanding of the breadth of the related issues is richer for it.

But please do not confuse a passionate attack on a muddy position because of its muddiness for me sticking cotton in my ears and screaming "I'm right" very loudly.

Of course.

No arguments here.

Exactly! And it is absolutely cynical and deeply perverse. This is why I rejoice when I see what is natural treated as natural and incidental (as is the case in much of European cinema) or as beautiful and worthy of veneration on its own merits (as is the case in classically-inclined fine art photography and painting). I think that these two perspectives on nudity are FAR more healthy and life-affirming than is the American attitue of combining shame with lust and turning everything toward arousal and manipulation.

Where Gerbil and I differ is that he is proposing two basic alternatives: nudity/sex-for-sale, or removing sex and nudity from the public square. I reject this as a false dichotomy. Although the sex-crazed commercial machine has made the subject a tired, boring, or sickening one for many, I consider surrender (for those who can push for a better way) to be part of the problem. I am in a posiiton to push back against the understandable censorious impulse on one side, and the licentious exploitators on the other, so I do what I can. And I do so because, in the end, I see the censorship and the exploitation as serving the same end - the consolidation of power and money into the hands of those who make a big issue out of something that should be no issue. Whether they wear the label of conservative, liberal, Christian, secularist or something else, those in positions of power have found that they can control and divide this country by threatening the sexuality of its inhabitants. But the sexuality is ours, and we should not let them control us that way. As far as I can see, the best alternative is to push for the natural to BE natural, rather than a point of idolization, exploitation, or shame.

Thank you